Should Community Goals be advertised before they start?

[Unknown Zombie]

If they are going to advertise CGs, FD need to do something to fix the fact that many CGs don't even last the weekend. If you gave players 2 days notice of a bountyhunting CG, it's not unlikely that the CG itself would only run for 5 minutes.

Also... As soon as a CG is announced in advance, there are quite a few players who would immediately flock there to UA bomb and/or force the system into lockdown.

I wanted to rep you for this comment, but I can't.

I can see this happening to an extent. If you tell people about the CG before it starts, they will just pre-game. They'll collect millions of bounties to hand in the instant it unlocks, or they'll already have a cutter (or maybe more than one) parked at the station, loaded up with the desired commodity, to turn in the instant it unlocks.

However, I don't think it would mean that CGs would finish in 5 minutes. What I do think is that it might just shift the timescale a bit. CGs might finish 2 days earlier on average since they (for all intents and purposes) started 2 days earlier. I don't forsee people putting much more effort into pre-gaming a CG than they would put into it had it been announced the moment it started.

The last part of your post is where I feel the real tangible change this might bring comes from. It would give people who oppose the CG (and perhaps just common salt miners) a chance to UA bomb the station or manipulate the BGS into an unfavorable position. Give the people who oppose the CG for whatever reason more opportunity to interrupt it.

For the OP, I think the only way to get people to "talk politics" about whether a CG is going to be worthy of support is to have two CGs that oppose each other. CGs are a way for players to earn rewards, and as such, the average player is going to participate regardless of if they agree with the lore behind the CG. For the community to show opposition to a CG by not doing it will never happen. There's no way in the current implementation that this CG will fail, regardless of how the community feels about it, because people are going to run on the treadmill for their millions of credits reward (and I couldn't blame them). The only way the community could legitimately shape the lore based on the outcome of CGs is if FD started implementing CGs in a way that two of them oppose each other, and whichever ends first (or has highest tier when time is up) wins.

But to be entirely honest, I'm not sure FD intend for us to shape the lore with CGs. They know people are going to participate, so this CG is just an "interactive vehicle" for their predetermined narrative.

 

[Rakaposhi]

Seems like a good suggestion, as long as they put the date in the correct format, 4/20/3304. 

Off topic I know, but if anyone is going to change the date to MM/DD/YY, can we please have time in hh:ss:mm? Thank you!

 

[Unknown Zombie]

Off topic I know, but if anyone is going to change the date to MM/DD/YY, can we please have time in hh:ss:mm? Thank you!

Some write the date MM/DD/YY because in spoken word it is typical to say "April thirteenth, two-thousand eighteen." No one says the time of day the way you propose it.

 

[Cmdr Eran Mintor]

Some great points raised here. Yes, if FDev has no desire for us to influence the story that greatly then I could see no point for this suggestion, but based off of how they try to market their game, I'd think player influenced stories are one great part of their draw.

I'm sure they have a road map for where the story will go but they need to allow flexibility.

 

[LaTokk]

Some write the date MM/DD/YY because in spoken word it is typical to say "April thirteenth, two-thousand eighteen." No one says the time of day the way you propose it.

Spoken word round here would be 13th of April, twenty eighteen (most people switching from 'two thousand and' once we hit 2010) - maintaining the correct date hierarchy order, but then I'm in the UK. Two thousand eighteen without the 'and' is also an Americanism.

 

[Brett C]

Hi folks,

We've had a few internal talks about this and decided against this idea.

Unfortunately, this would lead to commanders preloading items to their ships and gaming the CG's we setup. Especially when said commanders do not visit our forums for information. It simply wouldn't be fair to everyone.

On the flipside, there's always the chance that our QA team comes across an issue before we make the CG's live. So if we were to post something early, there's the chance you could spend all that time jumping to X region and find out that said Y CG isn't even going to be live for the week. When and if that happens, we tend to hold the pending CG back for another time.

Thanks

 

[Cmdr Eran Mintor]

Hi folks,

We've had a few internal talks about this and decided against this idea.

Unfortunately, this would lead to commanders preloading items to their ships and gaming the CG's we setup. Especially when said commanders do not visit our forums for information. It simply wouldn't be fair to everyone.

On the flipside, there's always the chance that our QA team comes across an issue before we make the CG's live. So if we were to post something early, there's the chance you could spend all that time jumping to X region and find out that said Y CG isn't even going to be live for the week. When and if that happens, we tend to hold the pending CG back for another time.

Thanks

Sounds like you guys were suggesting mentioning things on the forums, and you are right many players don't frequent them enough to know. What I was suggesting though were galnet articles which any player can see, regardless of console/PC.

Either way I'm happy it's at least something that's been considered.

 

[Stealthie]

Perhaps a decent compromise might to to have Galnet post a list of some of the upcoming CGs, just so that people could be made aware of them and be reminded to check the mission-boards every Thursday?

The list could be posted, say, every 3 months and just contain the "highlights" (or, perhaps, some of the CGs FDev is aware will be happening) so we'd know there would be, say, a combat CG or a well-paid trade CG happening fairly soon.

I have to agree with those who're against the idea of announcing specific CGs though.
The problems would probably outweigh the benefits, both for participants and the dev's.

 

[JesusRocks1988]

Hi folks,

We've had a few internal talks about this and decided against this idea.

Unfortunately, this would lead to commanders preloading items to their ships and gaming the CG's we setup. Especially when said commanders do not visit our forums for information. It simply wouldn't be fair to everyone.

On the flipside, there's always the chance that our QA team comes across an issue before we make the CG's live. So if we were to post something early, there's the chance you could spend all that time jumping to X region and find out that said Y CG isn't even going to be live for the week. When and if that happens, we tend to hold the pending CG back for another time.

Thanks

I see where Brett's coming from about it reflecting badly on FD and looking unprofessional if they were to advertise a CG and then subsequently not do it.

However, I rebut by saying there are already plenty of other things that FD do that look unprofessional. Telling people to check the forums for more information on a patch hours before there's any information available, is unprofessional, for example.

Opening a Focused Feedback Forum and leaving everyone in the lurch, is unprofessional.

And wasn't there an advertised CQC championship a few years ago and never materialised? Unprofessional.

I could go on...

 

[GunnerBill]

Couldn’t you start front loading bounties, sign up then dump them?

 

[IamNickMan]

This is a pretty simple question, do you think community goals should be advertised before they officially begin?

An example galnet would be something as follows,

"Aegis Research is moving logistical assets this week to Sol in preparation for the drive they are planning to start next week on 20/4/3004 to raise the amount of 2 bajillion biowaste needed for their proposed expansion to Alpha Centauri."

Why, you ask?

Well, we need only look at one of the current CG's.
https://community.elitedangerous.com/en/galnet/uid/5acdd2a2928c691e18255c76

I find this CG fascinating, and also the lore behind it. I will just pull what I posted to a discord and paste it here: (edit: discord copy + paste was horrible so here's a summary)

[CG text makes it sound like they're taking very young children and molding them with their propoganda and training to be their personal soliders, possibly to act as a hit-squad or something similar. Eerie reminder of the SS or Hitler Youth, perhaps airing these articles before the CG's start would allow people to discuss the politics and if it's something that should be supported.]

Curious to hear what your thoughts are. Are the repercussions of these CG's worth caring about or should we just continue in this same dance with no care to what the politics are or mean, and allow no ability to oppose the story FDev is force-feeding us?

Edit 2: I want to also point out that while yes, one full week is enough time for you to individually decide if you want to participate or not, the idea here is that we, as a community, can discuss the pros and cons of each CG in the week leading up to the start and decide if it's something worth supporting. Has anyone ever heard of a CG failing? I'd be curious to hear the past examples as I'm aware of none, and I feel this is mainly due to the way CG's are implemented.

No. Advertising CGs beforehand is a bad idea. Especially for CGs that were put forward by playergroups who end up putting in a massive BGS effort to make sure they go smoothly. Advertising when and where beforehand is dangerous & would destroy anyone's ability to prepare for the massive amounts of murder, smuggling and UA bombing that takes place.